In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Image of God and Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition
  • Verna Harrison
Kari Elisabeth Børresen , editor. Image of God and Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition. Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1991. Pp. 281. $40.00.

The editor of this volume has seriously researched issues of gender in early Christian and medieval theology longer than any other scholar, and her distinguished studies of Augustine's and Aquinas' views of women are well known. Here, she has brought together a group of leading European and American specialists in a collaborative study tracing the history of how gender relates to divine image in the anthropologies of Hebrew Scripture and the Christian tradition. Because image of God is the central concept in patristic understandings of the human, the patristic material highlighted in the middle chapters underlies discussions throughout the book. It is a major achievement, summarizing and updating some of the best research on the historical theology of gender, especially that of the early Christian period.

The contents are as follows: Kari Elisabeth Børresen, "Introduction: Imago Dei as Inculturated Doctrine"; Phyllis A. Bird, "Sexual Differentiation and Divine Image in the Genesis Creation Texts"; Anders Hultgård, "God and Image of Woman in Early Jewish Religion"; Lone Fatum, "Image of God and Glory of Man: Women in the Pauline Congregations"; Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, "Image of God and Sexual Differentiation in the Tradition of Enkrateia: Protological Motivations"; Kari Vogt, "'Becoming Male': A Gnostic and Early Christian Metaphor"; Børresen, "God's Image, Man's Image? Patristic Interpretation of Gen 1,27 and 1 Cor 11,7"; Børresen, "God's Image, is Woman Excluded? Medieval Interpretation of Gen 1,27 and 1 Cor 11,7"; Jane Dempsey Douglass, "The Image of God in Woman as Seen by Luther and Calvin"; and Rosemary Radford Ruether, "Imago Dei, Christian Tradition and Feminist Hermeneutics."

Bird's hermeneutically sensitive study of gender and the image in J, P and their combination shows how P explicitly includes woman in the divine image and hence in dominion over the earth. She also explains that the "male and female" of Gen 1.27 is properly linked with the "increase and multiply" which follows, more than with the image of God which precedes it, an exegesis actually echoing that of Gregory of Nyssa. Hultgård documents how women and even female animals were largely excluded from cult activity in ancient Israel. In the book's longest chapter, Fatum subordinates Gal 3.28 to 1 Cor 11, arguing that for Paul woman is not really the image of God and her humanity is not equal to that of man. Though I am not a Pauline scholar, her treatment of this material appears to me polemical and extreme, and the exegesis in Witherington, Women in the Earliest Churches, seems much more balanced. The chapters by Gasparro and Vogt update earlier excellent [End Page 319] studies by the same authors on early Christian material. While both of them write primarily as historians, Børresen combines intellectual history with theological critique based on feminist presuppositions in the following two chapters, as in her introduction. Douglass' study of Luther and Calvin is clear and interesting, though perhaps its most fascinating part is an initial survey of lively Renaissance debates about woman's nature. Ruether's concluding chapter responds to the other nine as well as offering a lucid summary of gender in Western Christian anthropologies from the eighteenth century to the present and of some contemporary feminist theory. Finally, she evaluates the whole tradition from her own perspective.

Børresen's basic thesis is that women were not originally included in the divine image but in subsequent history came to be included more and more fully. She suggests that by reading Gal 3.28 back into Gen 1.27, Clement of Alexandria was actually first to include them specifically. This thesis overlooks the polyvalent and dialogical character of gender concepts within the long history discussed in the book, beginning among the authors of the Genesis narrative itself, as described by Bird, and continuing in the rich variety of early Christian material described by Gasparro, Vogt and the editor herself. Her acceptance of Fatum's problematic reading...

pdf

Share